Thinking, feeling, willing in action

I have, over recent months, been much struck by three themes that my colleague Bruce Irvine of the Grubb Institute has been working with. Recently I wondered how they might be connected.

The first theme I noticed was the spirit of enquiry, and I particularly noticed this in the context of whether or not one felt curious. The loss of curiosity being a sign of having given up. I like to think of the phrase in terms of a spiritual "Spirit" called "Enquiry". A member of the family of Spirits whose most exalted member, the Holy Spirit, leads and contains all the others. The task of the Holy Spirit to be the relationship between, to be the flow of love and of grace. The task of the Spirit of Enquiry being the discernment of all that is, right here, right now, including, what is present of the future, emergent in this moment. Of spirit substance, the Spirit of Enquiry is thinking in action, it is Goethean observation.

The second theme is co-creation. Distinct from creation, co-creation highlights the deeper reality that all that is, is, because together we have made it so. The concept of co-creation precludes the possibility that we are victims of the other and insists that we have it in our gift to change our own behaviour in order that what is co-created becomes truer to our purpose. This concept struggles to be comprehensible, or even seem fair, until the concepts of pre-birth intention, karma and freedom are brought to bear. Co-creation is mobilised Will.

The third theme is self-authorisation. Just as co-creation reframes creation to include others, so self-authorisation reframes authority, once again frustrating attempts to attach blame for consequences to anyone else but oneself. I act because I choose to, because I authorise myself to act. The moment of commitment, of taking up ones own authority, is a threshold, and we only cross when it feels right. Self-authorisation is achieved through feeling mobilised in freedom.

Thus we se that, in freedom, our thinking, feeling and willing are put to work, enquiring, judging the rightness of decisions, and accepting responsibility for our part in all that comes about.

Meetings

I have noticed something that I find interesting about meetings. There are two sorts of productive and work related activities that occur during most work based meetings, making decisions and hearing reports. The observation is really very simple and it is a connection between the Foundation Stone Meditation (FSM) and these two aspects of meetings.

Tom Ravetz has written about the FSM and brought to my attention that it bounces back and forth between the human and the cosmic, the micro and the macro. This continues for the first six verses and then in the 7th the human being is brought in to focus in a new way, through the naming of roles: shepherd and king, two polar positions in society that encompass everything in between.

Then in the 8th verse it is back out to the cosmos with an appeal to Christ to warm our hearts and enlighten out heads so that good may become. This is a development from the 7th verse with the human beings being brought in to motion, to carry out action such that good will be brought in to the world.

However, it is the last 3 lines that really show the way:

What with our hearts we would found

What with our heads we would direct

With single purpose

When human beings work together they have the opportunity to let good become together and it is in social sphere in which we engage and work together. The social sphere is the creation of the human beings, we create it ourselves, and it the mesosphere or middle sphere, between the micro and macro. This is the location of our activity and to a very great extent it is through meetings that our activity comes about.

It was thinking about this that I realised I could understand these last three lines as a simple guide to how to run meetings:

Well made decisions will feel right for everyone

Attentive listening and penetrating questions will deliver healthy accountability

And use the organisation purpose to judge decisions and performance

Which makes a lot of sense and corresponds to my experience.